style

How Important is Style in Photography?

First, I'd like to start this article off with a little bit of a warning. This post is primarily aimed at people just starting to get into photography or people just beginning to make the jump from hobbyist to professional. That said, hopefully there's something below that can be appreciated by photographers of all levels.

Now, lets talk about style a little bit.

Your Style, Your Personality

In all art forms; music, writing, architecture, photography, whatever; originality and innovation are the things that produce the best works from the best artists. A lot of advice on how to improve your art focusses on technical and technological aspects; often with a cursory “develop your own style” thrown in somewhere. It’s a difficult thing to explain or teach: how do you develop your vision or style? And how do you know if you’ve found it?

PechaKucha 20 for 20 Presentation Style Makes Its Foray Into Photography

PechaKucha is a presentation style that gives presenters exactly 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to get their point across. Designed by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003, what started as a weekly show-and-tell format at their firm has become a world-wide presentation phenomenon that recently broke into the world of photography.

Woodenize Your Camera Using Wallpaper or Wood Veneer

Photographer Patrick Ng has an obsession with natural materials such as wood and leather. Recently, he decided to "woodenize" his beloved Canon F-1n SLR (a professional film SLR released back in 1976). He didn't use a pre-made kit for the conversion, though... Instead, he simply ripped off the faux-leather and replaced it with faux-wood wallpaper.

First Glimpse at a Retro-styled Compact from Fuji, Possibly Named the “XP1”

Fuji already introduced retro, Leica-style design to the world of mirrorless cameras with its gorgeous X series line, and now it appears that the company wants to do the same thing for the world of point-and-shoots. New leaked photos, first published on Digicam-info, show an unknown compact camera by Fujifilm that features a slick leather wrap and an elegantly minimal UI -- a camera that definitely wouldn't embarrass fashion-forward folk.

Moonlight Photographs by a Nocturnal Photographer

Argentinian photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg started as a photojournalist before turning to documentary photography and developing his trademark style of shooting under moonlight and using strobes and long exposures to illuminate his subjects. His portrait subjects are asked to remain motionless for long periods of time as he photographs them using a large format film camera. He recently applied his style to a series on residents of Northern Kenya -- a location that's typically photographed under the harsh midday sun.

Photographs That Resemble Traditional Chinese Paintings

Don Hong-Oai was a San Francisco-based Chinese photographer who created beautiful images that resembled traditional Chinese paintings.

The photographs of Don Hong-Oai are made in a unique style of photography, which can be considered Asian pictorialism. This method of adapting a Western art for Eastern purposes probably originated in the 1940s in Hong Kong. One of its best known practitioners was the great master Long Chin-San (who died in the 1990s at the age of 104) with whom Don Hong-Oai studied. With the delicate beauty and traditional motifs of Chinese painting (birds, boats, mountains, etc.) in mind, photographers of this school used more than one negative to create a beautiful picture, often using visual allegories. Realism was not a goal.

Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to use this technique, and was also arguably the best.

Walnut and Cherry Wood Coverings for the Fujifilm X100

Remember the light brown leather X100 special edition announced by Fujifilm a couple of days ago? While those might come with a unique limited edition serial number, the look apparently isn't as unique. As a commenter pointed out, it appears to be a covering offered by a shop named Aki-Asahi Custom Camera Coverings. There are quite a few styles in addition to that look (which is named "Lizard Ochre"), including a couple of beautiful wood coverings crafted from walnut and cherry wood.

Wooden Tripod for Photographers Who Want Both Style and Stability

Most modern tripods are made of materials that are designed to be light-weight yet stable. If having the lightest of tripods isn't a requirement for you, then check out these hand-made wooden tripods from the German company Berlebach. Though they can weigh in at 6+ pounds, the solid ash wood legs are supposedly better at dampening vibration than steel, carbon, or aluminum. Plus, they look pretty snazzy.